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This is Volume One of The Army Air Forces in World War II, titled Plans and Early Operations, January 1939 to August 1942, edited by Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate. The University of Chicago Press first published it in 1948, and the Office of Air Force History reprinted it in 1983. The front matter explains how the AAF historical program was set up during the war. The index covers Pacific, Atlantic and European operations, and nothing in the text concerns unidentified aerial phenomena.
“Churchill”21 pages
T H E A I R C O R P S P R E P A R E S F O R W A R , 1 9 3 9 - 4 1 In an earlier context,” reference was made to the Joint Board Esti- mate of United States Over-All Production Requirements of I I Sep- tember 1941. President Roosevelt’s request for the report had been motivated wholly by considerations of logistics. But the Joint Board had rightly deemed it impracticable to arrive at any realistic figures on forces and munitions needed for total war without a previous agreement as to national military policy. Consequently, the document when presented contained four parts: a report by the board on the strategy best calculated to defeat the enemy, and separate estimates by the Army, the Navy, and the Army Air Forces of their respective needs in personnel and materiel. In its judgments concerning the enemy’s capabilities and in its analysis of our own strategy, the Joint Board followed the general tenor of ABC-I. In spite of the entrance of the U.S.S.R. into the war, the board was convinced that Germany and her allies could not be defeated by the powers now resisting them. Hence to insure that defeat it would “be necessary for the United States to enter the war, and to employ a part of its armed forces in the Eastern Atlantic and in Europe or Africa.” T h e services were not, however, in whole- hearted agreement as to how those forces should be applied. T h e U.S. Navy considered that “since the principal strength of the Associated Powers is at present in naval and air categories, the strategy which they should adopt should be based on the effective employment of these forces, and the employment of land forces in regions where Germany can not exert the full power of her land armies.” lS9T o fulfil its mission, the Navy asked for I,IOO,OOOmen plus 150,ooo for the Marine Corps and a fleet built around 3 2 battleships and 24 car- r i e r ~ . ’ ~ ~T h e Army believed that “the foregoing strategy may not accomplish the defeat of Germany and that it may be necessary to come to grips with the German armies on the continent of Europe.” 135 It was on the basis of this concept of strategy that the Army made its estimate of personnel (6,745,658 men, exclusive of the AAF) and materiel.136 In respect to the proper strategy, the Army air arm took a position somewhat between these divergent views, but with decided implica- tions of its own. T h e AAF entered a plea for 2, I 64,9 I 6 men and some 60,000 combat planes,137and to justify so large a request they pre- sented an operational plan much fuller in detail and more elaborately * See above, pp. 131-32. ‘45
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